by Riley Ashby
These friends.
It was strange to look around the room and realize I actually had friends. Another woman who had been through the same hell as me and who was willing to help me with my memories. A girl my age who had found her true love in a strange situation and come through happier and luckier than ever. And Tori, who carried herself with such poise and confidence in every situation. She was like Archer and me, set outside of this family but still protected by its love and influence. The way a real family should be.
Archer’s phone rang, and he frowned, looking at the caller ID. He squeezed my shoulder as he whispered, “I need to take this.” I frowned after him as he walked out of the room, and when I looked at Castel, he wore a similar expression.
“Who is that?” I asked. He turned toward me.
“I think he’ll tell us soon enough.”
I gnawed on my thumbnail until he came back into the room, when I stood expectantly.
“What is it? What happened?” Had something happened to his mother? Were we too late to say goodbye?
He hung up the call and slid the phone into his pocket, looking thoughtful. “They want me back at the FBI.”
Castel sat up a little straighter. “You’re shitting me.”
He shook his head, smiling a little. “Probationary basis, because of this get. He says they wouldn’t have caught them without my help.”
I didn’t know what to feel. Did this mean he was moving back across the country? What about me? This job would surely send him away from me, but for how long at a time? Could I go with him and be alone when he took off on assignments?
“Josie.” I lifted my head; he was bent over a little to look into my eyes. “What’s wrong?”
I forced a smile. “Nothing. When do you start?”
He laughed a little. “I’m not taking it, sweetheart.”
I blinked. “What? But that’s what you’ve wanted this whole time.”
“I know, but …” He looked around the room, and Castel nodded at him. “Castel offered me a job on his team at Ellery’s company. We’re staying right here in LA.”
“You don’t have to leave?”
“We don’t have to leave.”
We.
He never intended to leave me.
“Oh God, she’s crying,” Tori muttered, and I realized she was talking about me.
“Come on,” Archer mumbled, pulling me out of the room. I followed him wordlessly back through the house to our bedroom once more. The moment the door closed behind us, he pulled me against his chest.
“Did you think I was going to abandon you out here after that little declaration I made? That took way too much out of me to walk back on it.”
I made myself small in his arms. I didn’t know why I suddenly felt so cold, but I drew the heat I needed from his body, and he handed it over willingly.
“But the FBI is your dream. Your life.”
“And if I went back to them, it would mean leaving you alone. There was a time that decision would have been easy for me—my job was more important than anything else—but everything has changed now. I couldn’t leave you to go on assignments like I used to. I want a job that’s going to keep me right by your side. And because I’ve got such a better handle on cybersecurity than Castel does, it means I can work remote from time to time. If you need me at home.”
I slid my hands around his back so I could hold him closer.
“I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“Find me where?”
“In the dark before the dawn.”
He pulled my face to his and kissed me fiercely. The cut on his lip pressed against my skin, reminding me of the danger we’d been in only a few hours before.
“You’re not in the dark anymore. If it feels like it, that means your eyes are closed. I’ll always help lead you out.”
Two weeks later, we moved into a smaller space a couple of floors down from the double apartment we hadn’t been taking advantage of for days. I tried to keep Castel’s advice in mind, giving Josie her own space, but if I didn’t come to bed with her, she’d crawl under my covers a few hours later. I pulled her to me unconsciously, waking up with her back pressed against my chest and the smell of her shampoo enveloping me like a blanket.
We were unpacking the clothes Ellery had bought us into new suitcases I had paid for with my first paycheck from working for his company when we got the call about my mom. I felt like I’d been hit in the chest, falling against the wall and dropping the shirts I was holding as I stared at my phone. Josie looked up with concern.
“What is it?”
“It’s the hospital where my mom’s at,” I said, swallowing as I answered. I was only aware of Josie’s arms around my waist as the nurse’s words filtered through my brain—it was almost over. She had days left to live, maybe hours.
Why hadn’t I gone sooner? I’d hoped to have more to show for myself by the time I saw her again. I’d wanted to be fully settled and more secure in my new career, so the news of my firing wouldn’t go over so poorly. I’d foolishly thought I had more time before this moment. All the warning signs had gone unheeded, and now I was down to my last few hours with the woman who gave birth to me.
I hated to encroach on Ellery’s generosity any more, but it was Josie’s idea to ask for his jet. We were flying through the air only an hour later, me too worked up to do anything but stare out the window. Josie knew exactly what I needed, making herself small in my lap and kissing my cheeks and neck periodically to keep me in the present. I held her tight, but she didn’t complain. A car was waiting for us when we landed, and we were at the hospital in moments.
And then Josie was next to me, clutching my hand as we looked down at my mother struggling to smile at me through her pain.
“Mom,” I whispered, dropping onto a chair next to her. Josie stood behind me, hands on my shoulders.
She was so weak she could barely speak. I apologized for not coming sooner, for being unavailable across the country while she languished, but she smiled and stared at Josie. I explained everything about her. What she had been through, and how I’d come to meet her. The way I’d resisted her, and the way she broke me down.
Mom laughed at that.
Josie sat on the side of the bed and touched my mom’s hand gently. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you. I wish we could have come sooner.” She swallowed, and when she spoke next, her voice shook. “I’m sorry I kept him away so long.”
Mom shook her head. “He needed you,” she whispered. I laughed.
She always saw through to the truth of everything.
Josie left us, giving me time with my mom to say goodbye, all the things I’d been holding on to because I didn’t want to say them, didn’t want to admit that the end was near. I’d hoped for so long to be able to somehow scrape together the money for her heart and convinced myself that we would somehow figure a way out of this. That I’d keep her around for a little while longer.
It wasn’t meant to be.
Her wedding band and engagement ring were on a chain around her neck. She’d never taken them off in the years after my dad died, even when she grew so thin they slid off her fingers. I’d bought her the chain the third time they got lost in the sheets of her hospital bed.
She whispered to me with the last of her strength. “Give them to her when you’re both ready.”
I couldn’t help the tears that came next. It wasn’t manly or socially acceptable, but I felt no shame in showing the pain that had been weighing me down. My mom had been there through most of my worst times, and Josie had been there for others. I had no shame in showing my mom exactly how much I cared about her and just how much her passing would hurt me.
Josie came back into the room as I tucked the rings into my pocket, sitting next to me and holding my free hand. She listened as my mom forced out tales of what I’d been like as a kid. How upset I’d been the first time I got in trouble for a rule infraction at school. How angry she was the day I came hom
e with my first tattoo, using a fake ID so I could get around the age limit. And how proud she’d been when I completed my academy training and became a full-fledged agent. I could see so clearly how much every word hurt her, but I didn’t want her to stop talking. Eventually, the words became too much for her to bear.
The room was silent as she passed.
There was no passing of breath or visible transition of her soul. One moment she was there, and then she wasn’t. And still I couldn’t let go of her hand. I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that once I did, I would never touch her again. But eventually, Josie peeled my fingers back one by one and helped me out of the hospital.
I pulled myself together enough to get us back to a hotel, and then I fell apart. She held me through it all.
“I cry in front of you an awful lot,” I muttered as I finally cleared my face. She fetched us both water and ordered room service, then fell back into bed with me.
“Are you worried it makes you seem less tough?”
“I worry constantly about how you see me. If I’m enough for you.”
She cocked her head at me. “Was it not clear from day one that you’re everything I’ve ever wanted?”
Even when we were alone, it was hard for me to say everything I should. The things she needed to hear. “I don’t want to let the persona drop if you need me to be someone else.”
“I only need you to be exactly who you are.”
We didn’t have sex that night. I was emotionally drained, and she was nervous. We ate food. We watched TV. And we fell asleep on top of the covers, tangled and exhausted and filled up on each other and no one else.
Six months later
Josie was missing.
I’d come home from the office, where I had to stay late, and found the apartment completely dark. Every light turned off and the bed unmade and empty.
“Josie,” I growled, checking my cell phone again to ensure she hadn’t somehow slipped out of the apartment from the time I parked my company car to when I had stepped off the elevator on our floor. If she had, she had left her phone, and I doubted she was reckless enough to do that.
I’d asked her a few weeks after we had moved into the new apartment if she wanted me to take the tracking off her phone and give her back some privacy. I had to grit my teeth to ask her, but it seemed important that she have the choice once she was out of danger and I could finally trust her not to put herself in harm’s way.
“Of course not,” she’d replied immediately. “That would just stress you out. Besides, I like the idea of you knowing where I am. It helps when I have to go out on my own.”
I frowned. I still wasn’t comfortable with her even going to the store by herself, preferring grocery delivery services and the now significantly more robust building security. But I couldn’t deny the change in her demeanor when she accomplished something she’d been too afraid to try before, like making conversation with the checkout clerk or asking a stranger in the aisles for help finding something she was looking for. She’d wait all day to tell me about it, bounding into my arms the moment the door closed behind me. Every day, she was happier.
The one exception was her therapy visits. I made sure to take time off every week for those, escorting her myself and making sure she was comfortable. She told me she looked forward to them now and had asked me to sit in on a few so we could discuss the nature of our relationship. Everything had been so strange when we started sleeping together that we needed the chance to establish some understanding of how we wanted to proceed now that I was no longer being paid to keep her safe.
I looked around the apartment again. Her phone was sitting right on the counter, near the door, exactly where I could see it. Nothing else was out of place.
She wasn’t missing. She was hiding.
Leaving the lights off, I prowled through the apartment as quietly as I could manage, checking behind furniture and even in the pantry. I finally found her under the bed in our room and dragged her out by her ankle as she squealed in delight.
“You’ve been bad,” I said, dropping her on her back on the bed. She was completely naked. “You made me worry.”
She grinned and propped her legs open. “I guess you’d better remind me who’s boss, then.”
I didn’t bother with most of my clothes, pulling my pants and boxers down around my thighs in a hurry to join her. Being inside her still gave me the biggest rush.
I stopped just before slipping inside her, forcing myself to tease her clit first with the head of my cock. She moaned and writhed, reaching forward to try to drag me inside, but I slapped her hand away. I ran my fingers up her slit and pushed them past her lips, into her mouth, so she could suck her juices of me. When my fingers were deep in my throat, I finally pushed in.
We moaned together, and I had to freeze for a moment to make sure I didn’t come in her before we even got started. She took the opportunity to torture me back, moving her hips against me as I tried to hold her still.
“You’re making Daddy angry,” I growled, but she kept pumping me until I had no choice but to move along with her. Every thrust brought me closer to the edge, and I was sweating with the effort of holding myself back.
Desperate to extend our passion a little longer, I pulled out of her and flipped her on her stomach. One of my palms cracked against her ass before she could protest, her giggle transforming to a high-pitched yelp.
“Little girls who hide from their daddies don’t just get fucked whenever they want,” I growled, slapping her hard on the other cheek. She jumped under my palm as I admired the red handprint appearing on her creamy skin. “I think Daddy gets to choose how he fucks you.”
She groaned in anticipation and a little bit of jitters as I reached for the lube on our bedside table. She pulled her knees underneath her a little more to push her ass into the air. I coated the fingers of one hand with the lube and slid them slowly into her tight asshole, priming her for my cock as I lubed that with my other hand.
“Daddy,” she moaned.
I leaned over to bite her ass, still red from my hand. “Just let me take care of you, baby girl.”
When her asshole was nice and loose, I climbed onto the bed behind her and lined up my cock with the tight ring of muscle. She was a pro at taking me in her asshole, but she liked to pretend to be new at it because it got me off. As I slipped deep within her, I reached with my free hand to play with her clit. She wailed as she pushed back on me to swallow me to the hilt, her ass cheeks pushed against my hips as I fingered her up front.
“Christ, you’re tight back here.” If I had been barely holding on before, it was nearly impossible now. With my fingers on her clit and in her pussy, and my cock in her ass, it was only a moment before she was coming all over me and those taut muscles held me even deeper inside her.
I tried to hold on longer, but by her third orgasm, my body had decided to move on without me. I roared as I spilled my cum deep inside her, and she came with me for a fourth time before we finally collapsed to the mattress.
I pulled her off me, rolling her so we faced each other, and kissed her long and slow. I hadn’t had a chance to kiss her earlier before I thrust inside her. Her tongue met mine as I knew she would, eager to have me closer, missing me already. That was all right. I missed her too.
“Good day at work?” she asked when I finally pulled back.
“Better evening at home,” I whispered, pulling her close. She bit my nipple, and I groaned. “Don’t you ever get hungry?”
She laughed. “I’m actually starving. I didn’t feel like cooking today.”
I shrugged. “We can order in.”
“Actually, I thought we could go out?”
I had to pull back to look at her. “Really?”
She nodded and bit her lip. “If that’s okay.”
I kissed her forehead. “Of course, it’s okay. I’m just surprised. It’s Friday, so that means everywhere will be crowded.”
“I think I’m ready for it
.”
It was hard, but she made it through the meal. Coped with the waitstaff approaching every other minute to refill our water and the conversation around us that we alternately couldn’t hear or could hear all too well. And at the end of the night, she was smiling. We didn’t go straight back to the apartment after, choosing instead to walk along some of the most crowded roads in the city to see what the nightlife had to offer. She raised an eyebrow as we passed the club where she had kissed a strange girl so many months ago before I’d allowed myself to acknowledge what I felt for her. I slipped my hand from hers to grab her around the waist, leaning down to whisper in her ear.
“Don’t even think about it.”
We became an unofficial part of the King family, heading to Ellery and Sophie’s house each week for dinners with them as well as Castel, Vail, Tori, and eventually an old friend of Sophie’s who was a rising star in the MMA scene. I could let her leave me for longer periods at a time, although the rush of relief I felt when we were back together never faded. And it only grew harder for me not to wrap her in my arms in the presence of the others. She knew this, gripping my hand tightly until I could pull her outside to our car, buckling her into the passenger seat and pressing her head back into the headrest as I kissed her.
Sometimes I didn’t wait until we got home to pull over and fuck her in the back seat.
And every night, whether we slept together or not, we fell asleep in the same place and woke up there too.
I kept my mother’s rings in the drawer next to my side of the bed. I found her looking at them once, when she thought I was in the kitchen, sliding them onto her fingers and admiring them in the light before placing them back in the drawer and closing it quietly. I almost asked her then, relishing the sense of possession and devotion that flowered in my chest. But neither of us was ready yet, and we knew it.
